Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Twelfth Night

January 5, 2012 by Jennifer

And now for our traditional posting of  the thoughts of our Christmastide chronicler, Mr. R. Herrick,  on Twelfth Night.  What’s that you say?  We’ve never posted Mr. Herrick’s thoughts  on Twelfth Night before?  What a gap there is between the mind and the fingers!  That must be why, much to my amazement, all the excellent posts I  thought of over Christmas have not magically appeared here.

Ah well no regrets: Mr. Herrick would not approve.  May you all find a bean or a pea in your plum cakes and be free from offense in this glad new year!

The Bean King and Other Revelers in David Teniers the Younger's "On Twelfth Night"

Twelfth Night: Or, King and Queen

Now, now the mirth comes
With the cake full of plums,
Where bean’s the king of the sport here ;
Beside we must know,
The pea also
Must revel, as queen, in the court here.

Begin then to choose,
This night as ye use,
Who shall for the present delight here,
Be a king by the lot,
And who shall not
Be Twelfth-day queen for the night here.

Which known, let us make
Joy-sops with the cake ;
And let not a man then be seen here,
Who unurg’d will not drink
To the base from the brink
A health to the king and queen here.

Next crown a bowl full
With gentle lamb’s wool :
Add sugar, nutmeg, and ginger,
With store of ale too ;
And thus ye must do
To make the wassail a swinger.

Give then to the king
And queen wassailing :
And though with ale ye be whet here,
Yet part from hence
As free from offence
As when ye innocent met here.

-Robert Herrick

Posted in Christmas | Tagged | Leave a Comment »

The Coming of the Light: Lucia, December 13

December 13, 2011 by Jennifer

Posted in advent, Saints | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

Nicholas at Nicea: Nicholas of Myra, December 6

December 6, 2011 by azambone

I often imagine attending the Council of Nicea.  Don’t you?  Well, not often, but I have, once or twice.  It would be a splendid occasion, I’m sure. Everyone there from the Emperor Constantine on down looking just like their own Byzantine icon…all gold leaf with serene expressions, mitres, robes, and requisite accessories.  And there in the midst of them their confrere–the patron of Greece, Switzerland, various bits of Italy, Belgium, Germany, and divers other countries, as well as sailors, coopers, children, apothecaries, shoeshine men and pretty much most of the population– small Bishop Nicholas of Myra:  a right jolly old elf, with twinkling blue eyes, a tummy that wiggled like a bowl full of jelly, white beard, red wool suit trimmed with ermine, and a glowing pipe that he rapped against the side of his long black boots after a lengthy session on the filioquequestion, before stepping outside to check on his reindeer.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, and he was at the Council of Nicea.

What he did, or said, is lost to us.  He was almost certainly Trinitarian; Arians, those who followed the teaching of Arius, Bishop of Alexandria, that Christ was a divinely anointed human, not God–certainly had their saints, but those were removed from the calendar after the Trinitarians prevailed.  If Nicholas had been one of those Arians, we wouldn’t be celebrating his feast day.

It’s tempting to invent stories….Hey, did you know that Santa Claus had the whip before the reindeer?  Yep, that’s right;  Nicholas, Scourge of the Arians, always shown with a whip due to the way he beat up on heretics.  The reindeer got grandfathered in later on to explain the whip, dontcha know.  (See how easy that was?  A story designed to explain a story, and it’s even based on a legend that Nicholas once slapped Arius in the face for his blasphemy. Don’t do this kind of thing at home, kids!)

But,  to return the question at hand, no, Virginia, don’t know anything of Nicholas’ trinitarian views, or whether he delivered a stemwinder of a speech at the Council, or anything.  But it’s good to emphasize that Nicholas was an actual, historical figure, who did incredibly boring things like (probably) attending church conferences. Even though this was one of the most important church conferences of two thousand years, I am sure Nicholas wished that Coca-Cola had been invented before 325.  And tobacco, come to that.

Despite, or perhaps because of Nicholas’s presence in Nicea, he became one of the most popular saints on the calendar.  As his generosity and love of children were both legendary, his holiday is celebrated with great vim and vigor by many children, even the very small.

Woot! Check out my St. Nick's loot!

Posted in advent, Saints | Tagged , | 1 Comment »

The Saint Who Wears Orange: Hubert, November 3

November 3, 2011 by azambone

From the sound of his vita, Hubert was pretty much your average member of the medieval nobility. Perhaps that is why, though mainly forgotten now, he was a popular saint in the Middle Ages, if not “The Popular Saint of the Middle Ages.”

Hubert was the eldest son of the Duke of Aquitaine, which is to say that he was one of the most powerful nobles in early medieval Europe.  He liked to drink.  He liked to hunt.  He was agreeable and gracious, so much so that he seems to have easily insinuated himself into the royal households of Francia, circa 675-680.  Naturally he married well.  Success, medieval-style, was not just assured, but attained.  Then he went and ruined everything by getting religion.

Out hunting on Good Friday, he pursued a stag—a buck  for American hunters.  As he did, it stopped and turned toward him, unusual behavior then and now amongst the family Cervidae.  In its antlers there was a crucifix, and Hubert heard a voice say to him, “Hubert, unless thou turnest to the Lord, and leadest an holy life, thou shalt quickly go down into hell.”  Apparently a quick study, Hubert made an umimpeachable response:  “Lord, what wouldst thou have me do?”

What the Lord had Hubert do was not turn to vegetarianism or non-violence, but go and find a spiritual director, Bishop Lambert of Maastricht.  As wives tend to do in the lives of medieval saints, Hubert’s conveniently died, allowing him to become a priest, make a pilgrimage to Rome, and on his return become bishop in Lambert’s place. (Lambert had been murdered by some of Hubert’s old cronies.)

Hubert’s greatest efforts during his bishopric seem to have been devoted to the conversion of those pagans remaining in the forest of Ardenne and perhaps this and the deer explain a little something of Hubert’s appeal to medieval people.  Medievals were not sentimental about the forest.  It was not something to be preserved, but defeated, as it was always attempting to defeat them. They lost animals and children in the darkness of the woods; cf., if you would, any of Grimm’s fairy tales.

Hubert’s encounter with the miraculous stag seemed on this side of the probable for anyone who spent much time in the medieval woods.  His mission to the pagans still residing within the Ardennes, then a forest considerably larger than it is today, shows Hubert was a fighting saint, someone who was willing to sally into the dark places and overcome the strange and evil things that were there.

Hubert’s popularity caused many to choose him as a patron. His fighting spirit, and his noble lineage, explains why Hubert was the namesake of several military orders in the Middle Ages.  No prizes for figuring out or why he was the patron saint of hunters, huntsmen, trappers, dogs, forest workers, and hunting and why there are so many splendid recipes of game dedicated to celebrating his feast day.  What exactly smelters found in him is a mystery to me, unless it is that medieval metalworking tended to be located out where the iron was found and charcoal could be made, which meant that it was done out on the edge of the wilderness.

But why Hubert became the patron saint of mathematicians stumps me completely.  Not the sort of chap, I would have thought, whose homework you wanted to copy when you were struggling with geometry.

Posted in Saints | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

For All the Saints: All Saints Day, November 1

November 1, 2011 by Jennifer

The Church Triumphant

For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
Who Thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Completing the Halloween run up and then decrescendoing tomorrow into the commemoration of All Souls is the feast of All Saints. In the medieval  church, All Saints’ Day  was a significant festival celebrating the faithful who had attained heaven, the Church Triumphant.  The next day, All Souls’ Day was the commemoration of…well…every other Christian who had died, the Church Penitent.  All Saints’ was festive, and All Souls’ tended to be a grimmer with requiem masses and much repenting and worrying about where a relative was in Purgatory. In the secular culture, though, All Souls seems to have had a stronger pull. That makes sense. Hey, Francis and Ambrose, to name a couple of awesome saints, were lovely guys and great examples of faith, but when it comes down to celebrating someone you never met or thinking about how much you miss your father/mother/daughter/son/ grandmother/uncle, etc. and wondering where they are on the salvation spectrum…where do you think you are going to focus your time, energy, and attention?

Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress and their Might;
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well fought fight;
Thou, in the darkness drear, their one true Light.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

In the Lutheran church, however, most Protestant ones when it comes to that, all baptized and believing Christians are saints. Apart from high, high churches, like the Anglo-Catholics,  Protestants don’t celebrate  All Souls. Commemorations of the dead are held on All Saints and are held in the sure and certain faith that these saints have received the gift of redemption through grace and will not have to work off time served in Purgatory.  All Saints is then a jolly affair focusing as it does on the salvation given to the great Church triumphant.

O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
All are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Or at least  I think so, but that could be because the hymn sung on that day is so splendid. ”For All the Saints” was written by William Walsham How, then a rural dean in Shropshire, England, in the 1860s.  How eventually became a suffragan bishop in London and then the Bishop of Wakefield, and apparently he was quite good at what he did, but had he been half as competent as Bishop Proudie, this hymn would have made up the difference.  The tune is actually relatively modern too, having been written by Ralph Vaughn Williams, and the combined effect is electrifying. How wrote it as a processional hymn– hence the 11 verses that allow even the Anglo-Catholics to get around the whole church in procession–but verses 3-5 are typically omitted in most hymnals.  Apparently even modern Lutherans find 11 verses daunting. (And I shall wax eloquent on THAT topic of shame around Christmas.) Let the Methodists, remembering their heritage of terrorizing people with close harmony singing and getting their tonality on, take it away ! (The hymn starts @ the :17 mark and wraps up around 5:03.)  May you, dear saint, sing along and celebrate the foretaste of the feast to come.

But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day;
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of glory passes on His way.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Posted in Saints | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment »

Reformation Day: October 31

October 31, 2011 by azambone

So here it is, almost Reformation Day, and in fact, it is Reformation Day.  This day celebrates the day that Martin Luther dressed up as an Augustinian monk on Halloween and went down to the local bulletin-board—on the door of the church, as it happened—and tacked up a bunch of questions for the guys to consider the next time they got together for beers.  Well, more or less.

In fact, that is not so very different from what happened, though there are a great many party-poopers—who professionally work as historians—that question whether Martin nailed anything to a bulletin board, or anywhere else.  But, to be sure, a number of questions were proposed for academic disputation, and things steamrollered on from that point.

From this you could take any number of lessons, I suppose.  You could observe, piously, that there is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.  You might say, thoughtfully, that an honest question has tremendous potential to disturb everybody’s peace and quiet.  Or, angrily, that he should have kept his damn mouth shut.

That last was never going to happen, ever.  But for the rest of his life, Luther remained amazed that so much should have happened from such a small beginning, and from such a man as he.  By the side of his deathbed, decades later, was a paper on which he had scratched, “Wir sind bettler, das ist wahr.”  “We are beggars, this is true.”  One of the great proofs of the power of God for Luther was that He had taken the voice of a beggar, and made it loud enough to shake Popes and Emperors.

In the process, he took young man Luther—gaunt, ascetic, burning, driven—and transformed him into fat Doctor Luther—eyes placid, fat now padding those ascetic bones, belly full of beer and home-cooking.  You can see no greater reversal of medieval values than the transformation of the monk Luther, anxious for God’s grace, into Doctor Luther, Katie’s husband, content now to live a simple life within the hands of a gracious God.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

Ghosties, Ghoulies, and Things That Go Bump in the Night: All Hallow’s Eve, October 31

October 31, 2011 by Jennifer

Danse Macabre by Bernt Notke (15th Century)

Really there’s no point writing about Halloween.  The origin of the holiday is covered elsewhere in more detail than you can ever possibly desire.  (Just google it.)The debates within Christianity about whether Halloween should Christians should celebrate Halloween is covered elsewhere in more detail than one can possibly desire. (Ditto with the Google). And pretty much everyone knows how to celebrate Halloween if they are celebrating it ; and how not to if not.

The only thing worth noting about Halloween is its name. Halloween is the  contraction for “All Hallow’s Eve,” which is to say the night before All Hallows/Hallow Mas (Holy Mass) All Saint’s Day.  As the evening before a major festival in the Church, most people prepared their souls by coming to church and making confession, which is why  a young, frustrated professor  chose that date to tack up a notice on the bulletin board of a church near his University.  He figured, if he posted it then and there, a lot of people would read it.

He got that right.

Martin Luther Posting the Ninety-Five Theses

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.